Hacker News Reader

Comment by sorenjan | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone have any recommendations for good local PDF readers for Windows? I've been reading a lot of various papers recently, and clicking on a citation in Acrobat reader is very frustrating. The document scrolls to show the citation in view, but doesn't clearly show it in the long list that most papers have, and then I have to scroll up to where I was since it doesn't seem to have a working back feature.

View on HN

I've been using Sumatra PDF on Windows to read papers (and as my default PDF reader) for more than a decade. Clicking on a citation takes you to the bibliography page and lands the cited paper at the top of the screen. Then Alt-leftarrow brings you back.

Sioyek is a PDF viewer designed exactly for reading research papers and textbooks: https://github.com/ahrm/sioyek.

Sioyek seems awesome, especially vim inspired features. Too bad u (undo) doesn't work and there doesn't seem to be a way to undo. Am I missing something or is it laking it?

I found this related issue: https://github.com/ahrm/sioyek/issues/633

Improved over that https://github.com/ahrm/sioyek/issues/1011

looks cool

Zotero's V7 reader is great, built on pdfjs (Mozillas pdf reader) and adds neat things like notations and dark mode.

is it possible to point Zotero to a local dir with papers, or am I forced to import documents into it?

I love zotero. The combination of annotation, highlights, document management and a healthy plug-in ecosystem are just killer for me.

It feels a bit dated sometimes, but I'm yet to find anything that comes close.

It looks a lot nicer after the recent design update!

IIRC, pdfjs is used by Google also, and was based on Foxit? ? Does anyone know?

PDF.js came out of Mozilla, not Foxit.

Yes, but I think Mozilla may have started with code from Foxit.

The PDFium plugin that was part of Chrome was based on C++ code from Foxit.

PDFjs was written in JS from day one, and (as far as I know) was not based on any previous PDF reader.

Maybe that's what I was thinking of. Thanks.

BTW, I didn't mean they necessarily used the actual Foxit code, but it was a starting point maybe reimplemented in JS.

In no sense is PDF.js related to Foxit except that they are both PDF readers.

Where are you accessing Zotero V7? My understanding is that it is currently V6.[1]

[1] https://www.zotero.org/download/

https://www.zotero.org/support/beta_builds

Thanks! I'll try it out

I use Zotero and really like it, especially when working with others. This was the first thing that came into my mind on this thread.

Okular. You don’t need the rest of KDE. It has a Windows installer and I think it‘s also in the Windows Store.

SumatraPDF if you want speed above all else

DrawboardPDF if you want something more full featured and like to annotate, highlight, bookmark and whatnot, particularly if there's any chance you'll also use a stylus

Irrespective of the OS, I recommend Zotero (https://www.zotero.org/).

Mozilla Firefox has put a lot of time into their PDF reader.

https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/browsers/

Just so you know: normally it scroll down so that the reference is on top of the page.

But most importantly.. ALT+'left arrow' allows you to go back before you clicked on the citation! It doesn't work all the time, but usually it does after some left arrows ;)

Also, in Android: you can click on the 'scrolling sign' on the right of the pdf and specify the page, or see the link to 'jump back' to before you clicked on a link!

I hope that will help

ive always used SumatraPDF because its super fast and free

I am interested in knowing why and how Google Chrome is not enough?

Mostly too slow for a lot of content, not every content is supported, not easy to keep it open at the right page, no comments, not easy to find the right tab, etc.

What you might consider if finding an ebook reader app and using that. I had a similar issue but on Android (for ebooks not in kindle format). I ended up with Librera but there are several. Turns out it's also equally great at academic or work PDFs.

Same question but for MacOS. There don't seem to be many good ones for it.

Unfortunately, Preview has been the best reader in my experience. I say "unfortunately" not because it is inherently bad, but because it is a sad state of affairs when nobody can build something better than the barebones native tool

Try Skim

Just found this one I hadn't seen before, free version may suffice: https://highlightsapp.net/

Jumping back works in SumatraPDF (backspace).

STDU Viewer might also be worth looking into. Default shortcut for jumping back is ctrl+z.

Zotero!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com